While the supply of notaries seems to be non-existent outside of the standard 9 to 5, notaries can be found during all the other hours – here are seven ways you can find a notary:

Social Media – particularly NextDoor – is the easiest route to getting a helpful hand. Most people do have notaries living nearby and do not realize it. NextDoor limits access to its users to where they reside, so this platform is limited to residential community and immediately-surrounding areas.

Shipping/Mailing – FedEx / UPS / etc – they usually tack on a house fee, and may be open for extended hours. FedEx has a few locations that are open 24 hours; regardless of time, always call to ask because notaries are not always available.

Bail Bonding – these businesses require the use of notaries, so it’s likely they have one on-hand, at least during daylight hours.

Car Dealerships – likely to be open during weekends.

Hospitals – some might have a notary on-hand, but at the least they have referrals to mobile notaries.

Google Maps listings – many of these are for mobile services, so this one is a route of almost-last resort.

BONUS: There are several notary associations that operate at national and/or state level – these typically allow you to search for a notary near you. Also, your superior court clerk might allow online searches of their database.

Source: I am a notary myself, and have had to find notaries for my own use, as notaries are not allowed to notarize for their own signatures due to a conflict of interest.

H.R.6714 – Electronic Court Records Reform Act of 2018 seeks to eliminate fees after they became a slush fund.

It was discovered that PACER raked in approximately 150 Million dollars in 2016, according to article posted on ARS Technica. That’s a lot of money for a PDF server with a paywall. With so much money flushing into the coffers, the fund became a slush fund.

Meanwhile, a plug-in / extension was developed for use with internet browsers, designed to thwart repeated expenditure of access fees for documents via sharing already-paid-for documents: ReCAP the Law.

An interesting new discovery came about earlier today, on Jan 16, 2019; several attempts to legally access docket items on a case failed. Further testing revealed (so far) that the PACER system code may possibly be blocking access to documents to browsers with an active and enabled ReCAP extension.

Specifically, SlimJet, FireFox, and Brave browsers were tested with the extension not installed and then installed and then disabled. The browser sessions with the not-installed extension produced document access success, and the same success was garnered with an installed but disabled (via settings, so the plug-in/extension does not show in the toolbar). Any presence of the extension, and the post-authorization document viewing page showed up as a blank web page.

ReCAP staff are aware of this finding and further testing is ongoing to verify if ReCAP is indeed targeted for denial of access discrimination.

As for now, the bill is still sitting on the hopper after initial filing / intro. If you want to reach out to encourage Rep. Collins for his efforts, the easiest way to do so is via Twitter, here: https://twitter.com/RepDougCollins

Landlords will cite identity theft when asking for your SSN, but there are actually a few other reasons.

Eviction – SSNs are used for a federally-required search of a military database to determine if the tenant being evicted is a current member of the military or is a military veteran. This search is required before a toss-out can happen, as laws now give service members enhanced protections against the speediness of evictions. as leave can be hard to come by when deployed overseas or on duty in a stateside mission.

Credit Reporting – landlords will sometimes report payments to credit bureaus. Those that report do so to protect themselves and other landlords from bad tenants, and to provide both carrot and stick enforcement of the lease. Further, if a tenant leaves a debt, the former tenant is punished with a reduced credit score.

Debt Collection – landlords can use a judgment paired with data such as a former tenant’s SSN to sell the judgement-enabled debt to debt buyers who then go after the former tenant in return for a split of any payments received.

Litigation – with an SSN, a landlord can pay a PI firm to perform a utilities check to locate a tenant’s new place. With an SSN, driver’s ID number, and birth date, a landlord can locate property such as motor vehicles and then file for a lien on the vehicle. Insurance payments are expected go to lien holders first, then the owner.

These four reasons are not inclusive of all possible ways a landlord can weaponize a tenant’s SSN and the identity verification process. In other words, it’s good to pay rent on time and in full.

BONUS – a landlord can also use the SSN to report income from forgiven debt to the IRS, assuming they jump through a few hoops first to qualify to report uncollectible debt. An aggrieved landlord can also attempt to contact social services and demand that the back rent be reportable to agencies that issue benefits, for inclusion into income calculations.

SOURCE >> The author is an occasional evictions agent for property owners.

I used to be on FaceBook, until the day I posted an excoriating comment (it really was brutal) about a police detective. A few hours after I had made my remarks, several unknown F*Book users maliciously reported my account as a “hacked” account. Since the outage, I’ve been on Twitter and Instagram. I’ve learned a few things along my journey…

Instagram enabled me to quickly reach news media for a campaign to force a city utility to restore service. With the incredible array of media options, and the length of text allowed on a post, Instagram has proven itself to be almost as good as F*Book; the only thing it is missing are the Group and Page features.

Twitter is its own animal; posts can go viral with a quickness; Twitter stats revealed to me that one of my tweets had over eleven-thousand user-views. One new feature is similar to hastags – the image tag. When a user doctors up a pic with an adorable sticker, any user who clicks on the sticker gets to see who else has posted what with the sticker.

Twitter and Instagram allow users to use the hashtag feature, which can turn a campaign into a serious contender for traditional politics and problem-resolving; I’ve helped lead direct action campaigns designed to recoup stolen wages back into the hands of the workers said such wages were filched from. I’ve helped campaign for the release of people facing injustice within the court system and have raised awareness on various campaigns.

The power of F*Book is dwindling, and with new and improved interfaces / features, Twitter is now a go-to source for news; the coolest feature of Twitter is that – instantly – fellow users can share a tweet and send the OP (Original Poster) into immediate fame; one tweet can be shared many thousands of times over, sending packs of followers and supporters after an offensive person, group, or concept / policy like one would dispatching a pack of H***-hounds after someone. Which brings us to the power of social media…

Social media is, in and of itself, a wonderful check and balance, if used properly. Political campaigns have taken on a new meaning and life, with children as young as several years old calling entire armies of adults to action for a cause. With the power of social media comes the responsibility to diversify our reach, so that one platform does not possess a monopoly on the news feed, so to speak; it is vital to the whole of society that people have multiple ways to reach out to support one another. When protesters are wrongly jailed, Twitter has frequently been used to quickly garner support, while Instagram has allowed sources to securely leak valuable news to reporters across the world. F*Book, while capable of the same, has been caught up in censorship scandals.

While F*Book has some play, it is Twitter and Instagram that are proving serious contenders in the battle against corruption and malfeasance, and I encourage a good look at Twitter and Instagram.###